Burnt by Lyn Lowe Page B

might radiate out, but it was confined to a single place. This was everywhere. The same hot, throbbing pain ran through every inch of his body. It was too much to go numb. He couldn’t even manage to pass out again, thanks to the pounding in his head. It beat in time with his heart and kept him all too aware of his agony.
    He couldn’t move. Kaie tried to fight back the panicked certainty that he was paralyzed. He couldn’t even lift his arms. Desperate for some other answer, he forced his eyes open. He wasn’t sure it was worth it.
    It took Kaie some time to make sense of what he was seeing. He didn’t expect the familiar walls of his parent’s home. He was an adult now, wasn’t he? It was supposed to be the newly cut boards of his own hut, still smelling of the tree they used to be. Weir wood. Or…that wasn’t right. Stone. He was supposed to see stone. And a lamp.
    Everything was jumbled. He didn’t know if he wanted to sort it out. It made the throbbing in his head sharpen. And it didn’t help him. The mysterious cloth roof hanging over his head gave no new answers.
    “Jun?” He meant it to be a shout. It came out as a croaked whisper.
    A dark form interjected itself between him and the cloth. There was muttering, but he couldn’t fit the words together properly. His clouded mind dropped that in favor of panic at the sight of pointed cat ears. He tried to get away, forgetting the paralysis, but even terror couldn’t get his limbs moving. The squeak that came out of him was a sound entirely new, not even strong enough to be a sob. His vision spun and he nearly passed out after all.
    “Kaie!”
    He took a shuddering, painful gasp of air. A blink transformed the cat ears into tufts of brown hair, dirty and matted and looking three shades too dark. No matter how many times he opened and closed his eyes, he couldn’t quite turn the filthy, bloody, misshapen face into someone he knew. Not until the world stopped spinning and he could focus on the eyes looking down at him. Despite the confusion and pain, Kaie sighed in relief. “Sojun.”
    He felt a light brush of fingers across his forehead. He winced as they caught on his hair and tugged it loose from a cut there. It was a strange gesture. Comforting, he supposed, but strange.
    “Thank you Mother Lemme,” Jun whispered.
    “I must be dying,” he muttered, surprised at how badly his words slurred. There was something wrong with his tongue.
    Sojun’s eyes widened and jerked his hand away. “What? No!”
    The other boy’s voice was husky. Pained. Kaie supposed it could be due to the beating his friend clearly took, to leave his face so lumpy and mutated, but he suspected there was more to it. “You’re looking at me like you’re trying to memorize my face. It’s creepy.”
    One corner of Sojun’s puffed up lips turned into a faint imitation of a smile. “You’re not dying, Rosy. I won’t let you.”
    “I’m not going to be your girl Jun.”
    “Well there goes that plan.”
    Kaie snorted, which filled his head with all kinds of sharp agony. He pressed his eyes closed. “I can’t smell it.”
    “Smell what?”
    “The lavender. My dad hung lavender on the walls for me. So it would smell like home. But I can’t…”
    He opened his eyes again. Jun was staring down at him with undisguised fear. That was probably important. But he didn’t want to sort out why.
    “We’re not in your home, Kaie.”
    No. That wasn’t right. Stone. There was supposed to be stone. And the lamp. And water? Yeah. Water.
    “I’m sorry Jun.” He tried to smile. It didn’t feel right. And it hurt. “I’m… It’s confusing.”
    Sojun shook his head and patted Kaie’s shoulder lightly. That hurt too. “Don’t worry about it. You’ll feel better when you get some sleep. I’ll let you be.”
    Kaie didn’t want to stare at the strange cloth ceiling. He didn’t want to look at the strange dark patch on the left, didn’t want to be stuck wondering if he was